IMAGES OF WOMEN IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC

Romans of the imperial period believed that many women in the archaic era inspired others by their practice of Roman virtues whereas other early women's actions illustrated the consequences of vice. Lucretia, for example, committed suicide after she was raped by an Etruscan prince of Rome while her father and her husband were away. He had threatened to kill her and a male slave in her bed as evidence that he had surprised her in base adultery. That threat to her modesty (pudicitia) compelled her to comply with his demands. After he left, she summoned her husband and father. They arrived with friends, and she swore them all to revenge against the rapist. Then she killed herself to prove her innocence and to keep her example from justifying a lack of chastity (castitas) in other women. The vengeance she had inspired supposedly brought down the Etruscan dynasty that controlled Rome and thereby led to the founding of the Roman Republic (Livy 1.58-60; Dion. Hal. 5.32.4-35.2).

The myth of Lucretia exemplifies many Roman virtues: it stresses the supreme womanly virtues of pudicitia and castitas; its heroine is a woman who held lineage and family to be more important than her personal interests; it allows a woman to exhibit the Roman virtues of bravery and determination; it demonstrates that her role in preserving the family from shame was a vital one; it ties her moral qualities to the establishment of the Roman state. Another famous example of death in defense of pudicitia was Verginia, killed by her father to preserve her from rape (Livy 3.44-48, Dion. Hal. 11.28-38).

Roman religion neither existed as a discrete cultural practice in its own right nor could it be found hidden beneath other cultural practices. It was only in the very late Republic that there were attempts to coin cumulative descriptions like sacra et auspicia (Cic. Nat. D. 3.5), meaning 'cults and divination', yet it is only Cicero who uses religio as a generic term encompassing a group's duty towards, and care of, the gods. Cicero's religio, however, encompasses neither the organizational infrastructure and degree of coherence of these activities, nor their shared symbolic language, nor any related metaphysical reflection. To talk about Roman religion, therefore, is to talk about a range of cultural practices conforming to our notion of religion; this notion has, to be sure, grown out of Roman thought and terminology, but it has been strongly influenced by Christian discourse and the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.

It is no improvement to substitute the plural 'religions' for the singular 'religion'.1 This use of 'religions', which is fashionable at the moment, goes even further in suggesting the existence of a plurality of self-contained and neatly separated religious traditions or systems, on the model of early modern Christian denominations. By contrast, this chapter aims to demonstrate both the internal pluralism and the characteristic lack of clear external borders in Roman religious practices within their ancient Mediterranean context.

By the chronology of Varro, the greatest scholar of the Ciceronian and Augustan age, Rome's republic was 250 years old, and the city itself over 500, before the first literary event in its history. Until the third century, Romans seem to have used stylized language only for the formulae of religion and the law, and literacy was probably limited to the tiny elite who provided the city's priests, legal experts, and politicians. Thus, when literature was publicly welcomed at Rome, it was in a form that had been transferred from Greek culture by a Greek from South Italy; there was drama, which could be performed for a largely illiterate audience, and epic, which could be recited to them.

Despite this delayed flowering, drama and epic developed rapidly at Rome. And before the Republic degenerated into autocracy, poetry, oratory, and expository prose reached a level of achievement equal to the acknowledged greatness of Augustan literature. By 35 B.C. Romans not only heard but also read Latin prose and verse in virtually every genre except the novel; all other literary forms were already represented in the society in which Virgil and Horace, the oldest major poets of the principate, became adult.

When George Washington gave his inaugural speech as the first president of the United States under the new federal constitution, he asserted that “the destiny of the republican model of government” was “deeply, perhaps... finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American People.” A new “Senate” would meet on the “Capitol” hill, overlooking the “Tiber” river (formerly “Goose Creek”), as in Rome, to restore “the sacred fire of liberty” to the Western world. The vocabulary of eighteenth-century revolution reverberated with purposeful echoes of republican Rome as political activists self-consciously assumed the Roman mantle. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, the primary authors and advocates of the United States Constitution, wrote together pseudonymously as “Publius” to defend their creation, associating themselves with Publius Valerius Poplicola, founder and first consul of the Roman Republic. Camille Desmoulins attributed the French Revolution to Cicero's ideal of Roman politics, imbibed by children in the schools. At every opportunity, American and French revolutionaries proclaimed their desire to reestablish the “stupendous fabrics” of republican government that had fostered liberty at Rome.

By the middle of the second century BCE, the Roman colossus had cast a large shadow over the lands of the Greeks. The great historian Polybius, writing at that time, pronounced that Rome had subjected the whole world to its rule (Figs. 17 and 18). He added that the advance and increase of Roman dominion was now complete (3.3.9, 3.4.2)- Polybius was wrong. Rome had much more expansion in its future. But not only that. The idea that the Hellenic peoples had been subjected to the rule of the western power oversimplifies a complex process and an ambiguous relationship. Polybius saw the outcome as fulfillment of a long-standing Roman goal (1.3.6, 1.6.2-8, 3.2.6, 3.32.7, 8.1.3, 9.10.11). From the vantage point of the mid second century, the extension of Rome's hegemony over the Hellenic East seemed inevitable and irresistible. Polybius, a Greek intellectual and statesman, composed most of his massive history while in exile as a hostage in Rome. It is not surprising that he conceived a relentless march of Roman arms gradually subjecting the Greek world to its will.

The subject of Roman imperialism lends itself too easily to the hazards of hindsight. Two generations after Polybius, the Roman Empire was a fact. And Roman writers were eager to put the best face on it. Cicero affirmed that Rome gained mastery over all lands simply by coming to the aid of its allies (Cic. Rep. 3.35). Neither avarice nor lust for power motivated the expansion, just the noble aim of defending the defenseless.

Roman culture was in many ways a culture of spectacle: spectacle was at the heart of politics and of the Romans' understanding of the identity of their community. Theirs was above all a visual culture, a culture of seeing and being seen, both on special occasions and in everyday life. Consequently, many actions were essentially theatrical, and there was relatively much less of what a modern person would call privacy. Indeed, a person's identity and status took on their full meaning only in the eyes of his fellow citizens. Repeated spectacles, which mostly belonged to recognizable types, reinforced Roman ways of thinking, especially through the power of the example (exemplum) and through the relation of the individual to the precedents established by traditional norms (mos maiorum). This culture of spectacle expressed the values of the political elite but also served as a vehicle for communication between all citizens, as all participated together in celebrating and reaffirming the common values, shared goals, and political institutions of the community.

Origins will always fascinate. By 264 B.C. Rome was already governed by means of most of the constitutional arrangements that are familiar to us from the 'classical' period of republican history; in that year it both completed the subjugation of peninsular Italy by capturing Volsinii (modern Orvieto) and began the process of Mediterranean conquest by sending its legions across the Straits of Messina into Sicily. Yet c. 509 B.C. it was just a large city in Latium with a constitution as yet undeveloped after emergence from a long period of monarchical rule. This chapter considers the origins of the Roman Republic and attempts to explain how the Latin city transformed itself into a nation ready and willing to grasp the prize of empire.

Before we begin, we must confront briefly the greatest problem in the study of early Rome, the notorious unreliability of our sources. They are almost entirely literary, and among them Livy, the only surviving writer to present a detailed narrative of most of the period, is preeminent. The reasons for this unreliability are easily explained: the Republic began c. 509 B.C., whereas Fabius Pictor, the first Roman historian, wrote c. 200; he and his successors in the second century B.C. had only very incomplete evidence, especially for the early period; many of Pictor's successors distorted what little material they had by reconstructing the history of early Rome so that it read like a history of their own times; and Livy unfortunately based his account on these writers rather than on the original evidence.

MILITARY REVOLUTION

In the last decades of the fifth century B.C. and the first decades of the fourth, the army of the Roman res publica could lay claim to the unenviable title “least efficient military establishment” of any major state in the Mediterranean world. Despite advantages conferred by population and location, Rome had trouble controlling the other states of the Latin plain and was locked in a struggle with the much smaller city of Veii to its north. In the course of the fifth century, it managed to add only about 200 square kilometers of land to the territory that it controlled. By 290, it was the dominant state in peninsular Italy, and its army was the most effective military force in the Mediterranean world.

The transition of the Roman army from ineptitude to lethal efficiency was the result of one of the most significant military revolutions in European history. A military revolution is defined by the transformation of a state's military and civilian administration to enable a high degree of coordination between the two.I Such structural change is often accompanied by significant developments in military equipment and doctrine that make the revolutionary state superior, for some period of time, to its rivals. Changes of this sort took place in fourth-century Rome, and the Roman military revolution was so profound that it shaped the course of the history of the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Near East for six centuries.

The historical period covered by the Roman Republic is a long one, comprising almost five hundred years of varied political, military, and cultural change. The central aspect of the Republic was Rome's rise from a small city, virtually indistinguishable from others in central Italy, to a metropolis, the capital of an extensive Mediterranean empire. These centuries produced the classic republican political system, marked by its culture of spectacle and performance. They also witnessed the ultimate disintegration of this system under the relentless pressure of internal dissention and the boundless ambitions of its leading politicians.

It was the Roman Republic that created the characteristic Greco- Roman culture, the result of a melding of Greek influences and native Italian and Roman traditions, which would be spread by the Romans throughout the Mediterranean world. This culture of fusion, a hallmark of the republican ethos, can be traced in literature, art, architecture, law, rhetoric, philosophy, and everyday life. Latin literature in all genres of prose and verse also emerged during the time of Rome's imperial expansion. Above all, the vast changes between the early fifth century and the mid first century B.C. are reflected in the growth and adornment of the city of Rome itself. By the time of Augustus (the first emperor), the city numbered over a million inhabitants, a population that would not be matched until London reached such a size in the late eighteenth century.

The wars between Rome and Carthage, the Punic Wars, were arguably the most critical Rome ever fought. Before the first, Rome was a purely Italian power and its forces had never operated outside peninsular Italy; by the end of the last, its armies had fought in Sicily, Africa, Albania, France, Spain, Greece, and Turkey, and it had acquired its first provinces in Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, and Africa and now dominated the Mediterranean world. After Hannibal's brief appearance before Rome in 211 (all dates are B.C. unless otherwise noted), it was to be over 600 years before a foreign enemy next appeared at Rome's gates.

The first war (264—241) was mainly fought in and around Sicily, apart from one or two Carthaginian raids on the Italian coast and a brief and disastrous Roman invasion of Africa in 256/5. It ended with the defeat of a Carthaginian fleet bringing supplies to the city's beleaguered army in Sicily. By the terms of the peace, Carthage was obliged to pay a huge indemnity and to withdraw its forces from Sicily and the islands between Sicily and Africa. Three years later, Rome used the opportunity of Carthage's involvement in a savage war with its mercenary army to increase the indemnity and seize Sardinia.

In medieval culture an accepted hierarchy of discourses set moral teaching above narrative yet established strong expectations that the two would be connected. Stories were necessary to illustrate general truths and make them memorable, while, in an age suspicious of the dangers of fiction, the claim to teach was necessary as justification for story-telling. The two most obvious forms the link could take are named in this essay's title. The exemplum has been defined as 'a short narrative used to illustrate or confirm a general statement'. Exempla or 'ensamples' usually purport to be stories that are or could be true and thus to offer evidence in support of doctrine, while 'A fable (fabula) is something which neither happened nor could happen'. Fables - invented fictions or pagan myths - were often seen as allegories, requiring interpretation to uncover a truth hidden beneath the surface. Boccaccio defines 'fabula' as 'a form of discourse, which, under guise of invention, illustrates or proves an idea; and, as its superficial aspect is removed, the meaning of the author is clear'. From early times, classical mythology had been so interpreted: Jupiter was taken to represent some aspect of the Christian God, or, as Boccaccio, following earlier commentators, explains, Mercury's visit to rebuke Aeneas means that Aeneas was roused by 'remorse, or the reproof of some outspoken friend'.

Any description of Chaucer's style is complicated by the two distinct and conflicting meanings the term 'style' now has. The first of these is a product of Romanticism and can be described as the belief that word forms and grammars are aspects of human character. Where 'the attunement of the soul' is thought to 'exer[t] a particular influence upon the language', as Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) believed, languages will seem to differ from one another in the very same ways, and in the very forms, as people differ. When developed as a method of literary analysis, as it was by philologists such as Leo Spitzer (1887-1960), this view can also discover the 'soul of the artist' in the smallest linguistic detail (the habitual use of a conjunction, for example). Although we do not understand ourselves to be thinking along these lines now, we still employ this theory every time we say that a line of poetry, or a particular turn of phrase, is 'Chaucerian'. For the subtle but sure consequence of assuming that language and 'the artist' are equivalent is the belief that a writer's work is as cohesive as personhood (its parts are so integral that they form an indivisible whole) and just as distinctive (entirely unlike the work of any other person). In the case of Chaucer, such 'style' is the 'peculiar complexity' which sets his writing apart as if it were itself an individual. It is 'the meanings and values that make him Chaucer'.

Chaucer and Malory are the only Middle English writers whose literary afterlife has been pretty well continuous from the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Study of Chaucer in particular reveals the pressures and contours of Middle English studies with especial clarity. Many recent studies have focussed on aspects of Chaucer's reception, especially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the present chapter is devoted to that same period. It will in part confirm the conclusions of previous work, in part challenge them. In particular, I challenge the notion that Chaucer's fifteenth-century followers were inertly unresponsive to the possibilities opened up by Chaucer's oeuvre. Indeed, it is precisely the need to isolate Chaucer's genius that produces a dismissive account of Chaucer's fifteenth-century followers; that need began in earnest in the sixteenth century.

A complete conspectus of the way in which Chaucer’s works were revised and remade would need to cover the following areas: the changing nature of the texts in which his works were presented; the way in which he was cited in broadly ‘literary’ texts; the way in which his name was deployed in political and religious controversy. I give examples of each of these areas, but a complete conspectus would occupy a large book. Instead, I propose an argument designed to account for the structure of Chaucer’s reception between 1400 and 1550 (the date of the third edition of William Thynne’s Workes of Geffray Chaucer).

At a crucial moment in Book ii of Troilus and Criseyde, Criseyde is left alone to reflect on Pandarus's astonishing revelation that Troilus is dying with love for her. And as chance would have it, at this very moment Troilus rides past her window.

Social structure

Ideas of medieval social organization have much to contribute to the study of Chaucer. Socially and politically inflected topics are manifest within his writings, and socially grounded issues of literary taste and reception are thematically important as well. But, looking beyond particular matters of content, generally held notions about the structure of society also exert a tacit but persistent influence on the structure of his literary works.

Medieval social descriptions are very conscious of degree, and tend to emphasize the relatively small number of people at the top of the social hierarchy. The thirteenth-century legal commentator Bracton is representative when he divides society into those high in the ecclesiastical hierarchy (the pope, archbishops, bishops, and lesser prelates), those high in the civil hierarchy (emperors, kings, dukes, counts, barons, magnates, and knights), and those remaining (a general category of 'freepersons and bondpersons' or liberi et villani).